Red Barn Door

Red Barn Door comprises two aluminium panels painted in red household gloss paint. Areas of the surfaced are raised, shapes created by Hume’s use of silicone paste to recreate the ‘Z’-shape wooden framework seen on the barn doors of his upstate New York studio, where he spends his summers. Hume creates works based on his own environment, and his American studio has informed many of his works. His large gloss-paint canvases of hospital swing doors turned utilitarian objects into abstract paintings, ice-cream coloured panels punctuated by circles and rectangles. Despite Hume’s position as one of Britain’s leading painters, Tate has only four of his paintings in its collection, and this acquisition marks a continued effort to represent his work in more depth.